


Fair Trade

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angry Sex, Drug Use, First Time, Food Issues, Frottage, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Power Dynamics, Rough Sex, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:18:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5333843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam forgets to buy Kevin's peanut butter on a grocery run.  Kevin is angry, but that doesn't mean he's not still attracted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fair Trade

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Kevin Big Bang](http://kevinbigbang.tumblr.com/) Amnesty Week. Inspired by a prompt from [SPN Masquerade](http://spn-masquerade.livejournal.com/6017.html?thread=1798529#t1798529): "Kevin has a lot of cause to be angry in general, and some very good reasons to resent the Winchesters and Sam in particular. That doesn't mean he's not also attracted. One day it boils over, and things get messy, but maybe also fixed a bit."
> 
> Many thanks to my betas, [Amberdreams](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams/pseuds/Amberdreams) and [De_Nugis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis), for all the helpful advice and conversations.

The Winchesters were constitutionally incapable of reading a grocery list. Kevin tried to work with them, he really did. He wrote out what he wanted in the same neat cursive he used to use on his homework assignments, attractive and readable. He made sure to put his list in the Winchesters’ hands just as they were walking out the door to go to the store. Sometimes he even said “please.” The lists were so simple a child could follow them. The Winchesters never once got one right.

Sometimes they flat-out forgot, and for the next week Kevin had no oatmeal for breakfast or no Oreos for dessert. Sometimes—and this was the greater sin as far as Kevin was concerned—they deliberately ignored it, or made “improvements.” One of the bitterest fights Kevin ever had with Dean was over whether the Red Delicious apples Dean bought on sale were “just as good” as the Fuji apples Kevin had specifically requested. They fucking weren’t. They were mealy and gross, and didn’t satisfy his craving at all. He’d been looking forward to those apples for days.

You scream about apples once and you’d think people would get that groceries were a big deal for you. No such luck.

“The peanut butter is fine,” Sam said, dropping the grocery bags on the counter without even sparing Kevin a look.

“It’s not fine!” Kevin held up the jar for Sam’s inspection, even though Sam had his back to him, putting away cans in the cabinet. “It’s got an oil slick on top of it! I said I wanted Jif. I know they have it, and I know you know where to find it. You’ve brought it back before.”

This was worse than the apples. Eating out of trash cans had broken Kevin of the vegan thing real quick, and he’d never had the energy or the confidence in the Winchesters’ shopping skills to go back to it. But he was still iffy on meat. Some days he got a brutal satisfaction out of ripping flesh off bones with his teeth, but other days just the thought of a hamburger made him flash back to the feeling of Crowley’s knife sliding through the joint of his little finger. Kevin could cook for himself, but getting the Winchesters to remember all the ingredients of even the simplest vegetarian meal was dicey, and when they did he was usually too busy with the tablet to bother. Peanut butter was a lot of what he ate.

Sam put a box of protein bars on top of the fridge. “It’s all-natural. It’s better for you. If you try it you might like it.” Polite and quietly condescending, like he was too mature to get into an argument about peanut butter. Kevin wanted to shove him in his broad, stupid chest, and force him to listen to Kevin for once in his life. He didn’t. It would probably have done as much good as shoving a brick wall.

Sam tried to walk out of the kitchen, but Kevin stood in the doorway. “Did I ask you for better peanut butter?”

Sam sighed. “We need to get on the road to Missouri. I’m not driving 30 miles round trip to buy you Jif.”

Kevin didn’t move. “You wouldn’t have to if you’d listened to me the first time.”

“Look, I swear we’ll stop and pick some up on the way back.” Sam subtly shifted to look past Kevin’s head, and Kevin turned to see Dean making a “wrap it up” gesture behind him.

This was clearly as good as it was going to get. “I’m serious. Promise.”

“Yeah, of course,” Sam said good-naturedly. “It’s a milk run. We’ll be back before you know it.” He still hadn’t made eye contact, but Kevin stepped aside and let him go with Dean.

Kevin always enjoyed the first few hours after the Winchesters had left. It meant he could play video games on his computer without worrying that one of them would catch him. They’d never given him assigned work hours, so he always felt vaguely guilty about fucking around, even on a Saturday or at eight at night. He cringed whenever one of the brothers walked into the library and surprised him while he was playing World of Warcraft. They might not say anything, but he could swear he felt the weight of their silent disappointment. The shame he felt then called to mind the thin line of his mother’s mouth when she caught him skipping his dreaded cello practice, which in turn inevitably reminded him of how he’d let her die alone, and had never even found her body to bury it. It kind of ruined any fun he might have had pretending to be an orc.

Alone, Kevin could take as many guilt-free breaks as he wanted. Not that he did all that often—once he got into the groove of translating the tablet he rarely wanted to stop—but it was nice to know he could.

Alone he could visit all his secret spots in the bunker, too. He’d spent more time underground than the two Winchesters combined, and he’d discovered dozens of hidden closets and crawl spaces they never would. He stole canned food and water bottles from the kitchen, gradually enough to avoid notice, and squirreled them away in these small, heavily warded locations, creating little makeshift panic rooms against the inevitability of attack.

Kevin had just finished distributing Sam’s entire box of protein bars among the various caches—he considered it retaliation for the peanut butter—when the alarm on his phone went off. He went back to the library and took his pills. After his breakdown on the houseboat he’d realized he couldn’t keep drugging himself into oblivion if he wanted to avoid regular visits from the hallucinatory version of Crowley who’d tormented him there. After a little research on dosage he’d worked up an appropriate schedule: 6am, noon, 6pm, and midnight. Enough to keep his head clear and his pain manageable, but not so much that he started hallucinating dismemberments. The system had the added benefit of keeping him operating on a 24 hour day. When you live underground it’s easy to lose track of time, and the next thing you know people are asking you why you’re cooking spaghetti squash at 4am.

Kevin stared at the tablet without a single glimmer of insight until the alarm went off again. He took his pills and went to get dinner. He tried making a sandwich out of Sam’s Wrong Peanut Butter, but it was viscous and oily, and it tasted faintly bitter, even paired with jelly. Kevin didn’t finish the sandwich. Seriously, fuck that guy. They were going to have words when he got back.

When the alarm went off at midnight Kevin took his pills and wished the Winchesters were with him. He didn’t like to be alone at night in the bunker. The dull hum of whatever magic powered the generators seemed louder in the small hours, and sometimes there was the barest suggestion of voices hidden inside the white noise, people in the walls who whispered to each other in the dark. Kevin strained to catch their conversation, but the fragments never shaped themselves into anything meaningful. It wasn’t even the sort of credibly spooky and enigmatic nonsense that appeared in haunted house movies, but genuine word salad. He wrote down what he heard one night, and ended up with nothing more enlightening than “cupola, nematode, falafel.” Worthless, distracting gibberish. After that he always wore his headphones when he worked late.

And then there was the ever-present danger that he’d turn a corner and find Crowley—the real Crowley—waiting for him. The King of Hell was only ever a few hundred feet away, after all, right beneath the floorboards, and Kevin’s faith in the bunker’s security system wasn’t as blind as the Winchesters’. He knew that if Crowley escaped he could reach the library just as easily as the bedrooms, but he still felt safer among his familiar books. Between Crowley and the people in the walls, Kevin preferred not to brave the hallways at night. He put his head down on his usual table, and left all the lamps blazing as his headphones played him off to sleep.

The alarm went off at 6am. Kevin took his pills and ate plain oatmeal while casting dirty looks at Sam’s Wrong Peanut Butter, which he didn’t bother to stir in. He missed Sam, even if he was a grocery-list-ignoring bastard. They usually went running after breakfast, and Kevin looked forward to the time they spent together. He enjoyed seeing Sam’s hair tied back in a ponytail, his long neck exposed to curious eyes, Sam’s broad shoulders under the tank top, and Sam’s powerful legs that were strong enough to leave Kevin behind, no matter how fast he ran.

Kevin wasn’t deluded about his feelings. He’d kissed Tommy Markham in the middle of a game of Grand Theft Auto when they were both fourteen. Tommy had never come over to his house again. That failed kiss was the extent of Kevin’s experience with men, but he’d spent high school googling gay porn sites, only to back-click out while blushing furiously as soon as he found what he was looking for. He’d liked Channing tremendously, but he’d never gotten the same thrill from kissing her that he got when he caught a glimpse of the football team changing in the locker room. At sixteen he’d been teetering on the edge of some crucial moment of recognition, but then his life had gone to hell, and he’d packed his unresolved issues away to handle later. He’d kind of hoped they’d disappear if he left them buried in the back of his brain long enough. They hadn’t, but by the time he’d gotten back to them he couldn’t remember why they’d once seemed so life-wreckingly scary. Kevin was really fucking gay, and he was okay with that, or at least he would have been if he hadn’t been condemned to an ironic Hell where he was constantly surrounded by a pair of male models he wasn’t allowed to touch.

Dean was a problem—his eyes, his chest, Jesus Christ his mouth—but he’d caught Kevin checking him out when he wandered into the kitchen shirtless one morning, and since then he’d only left his bedroom fully dressed. When Kevin stared at Sam, on the other hand, Sam stared back. After their morning run, Sam would look Kevin over with a quick, subconscious flick of the tongue that sent a shiver up Kevin’s spine.

Kevin missed the cool down after the run, too, the quiet time strolling through the woods with Sam in the early morning light. It was the only time Kevin got to enjoy the company of living things that weren’t Sam or Dean. Sam had a fascination with medicinal plants native to the Americas that Kevin didn’t remotely share, but there was a certain charm to how excited he got about lichen. Seeing Sam happy made Kevin want to reach out and hold his large, implausibly graceful hand. He never did.

When the alarm went off again Kevin hadn’t gotten any further with the tablet, and the pain that lived at the base of his skull was threatening to break through the muffling cotton of the medication. He took his pills and felt a brief pleasure at the thought of lunch. The way his heart sank when he got to the kitchen and saw Sam’s Wrong Peanut Butter sitting out on the counter was so dramatic that it was almost funny, even to him. He poured himself a glass of milk, grabbed some chips, and went back to the library.

He expected more failure, but he’d barely sat down before he locked onto a glyph, and the symbols clicked neatly into the docking stations of his mind. The next time the alarm went off he was too engrossed in his work to get up. He’d take his pills as soon as he was finished with the line.

The alarm went off. He was confused; he’d just heard it a few minutes ago. His head throbbed dully, little tentacles of pain stretching out behind his eyes. He didn’t want to step away from the tablet, but he was hungry and light-headed. It was dinner-time, maybe?

He froze standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, and contemplated the steps necessary to make a sandwich: getting out the bread, finding the right knives, opening the peanut butter, spreading the peanut butter, getting out the jelly, opening the jelly, spreading the jelly, cutting the sandwich, cleaning the knives, drying the knives, putting away the knives, wiping down the counter afterward. It felt like a punishingly complicated amount of work, and Kevin couldn’t sort it into achievable steps. It was all one big, indigestible chunk of effort, and Kevin sank down at the kitchen table, defeated by it. He glared at Sam’s Wrong Peanut Butter.

It was mean, what Sam had done. Kevin didn’t have many things worth living for, and Sam had decided that this week he’d have to make do with one less. If Sam wanted to, he could decide Kevin never got to eat peanut butter again, and there wouldn’t be a goddamn thing Kevin could do about it, unless he wanted to go back to eating out of garbage cans, getting menaced by demons, and freezing his ass off in an abandoned house in the middle of a Midwestern winter.

The fucked up part was that this wasn’t even meant as punishment. Had the Winchesters used Kevin’s food the way a master used dog treats it would have been unbelievably shitty, but at least it would have been predictably shitty. When a dog rolls over, he gets his biscuit. As it was, Kevin could work twelve hours a day on the tablet and still lose his peanut butter, or he could screw around on World of Warcraft and waste half the day drinking whiskey, only to have Sam bring him random surprise mangoes. Nothing Kevin did had any effect on what was done to him. When he was a surly asshole Sam took him for a nature walk; when he tried to save all the skinny people in the world from poisoning Sam left him to die. Sam wanted to fuck him, Kevin was sure of it, yet not even the possibility of getting his dick sucked was worth the effort of following Kevin’s five-item grocery list.

When the alarm went off Kevin was still sitting at the kitchen table. He heard the key turn in the upstairs lock as he took his pills. He felt hot and shaky, his heart palpitating with rage.

“Hey, Lucy, I’m home!” Dean called.

“He’s probably asleep,” Sam said in a not-quite-whisper.

“I’m up,” Kevin said as they came down the stairs. He was surprised by how calm he sounded. “Did you go to the store?”

Sam looked genuinely baffled. “What, why?” Which was exactly what Kevin expected.

“You said you’d buy peanut butter on the way back.”

Sam scrubbed a hand over his face. The skin under his eyes was blue-black, the way it had been since he ditched out on the Trials. “Did I? Yeah, okay. We just drove all night. I’ll go to the store after I get some sleep, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay.”

Sam stopped, startled.

Dean patted Sam on the shoulder as he walked past. “Thank Christ you’re the one who screwed up his grocery list this time. Have fun, Sammy. I’m going to bed before he yells at me about his fucking apples again.”

Dean walked off, leaving Sam stranded alone at the foot of the stairs. “What do you want me to do? Drive into town for peanut butter at 6am?”

Sam was acting calmly reasonable, like he was handling a child throwing a fit, and it made Kevin want to punch him in his earnest face. He did his best to control his voice. “I want to know why you did it in the first place.”

Sam looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “I forgot. Look, go cool down a little, get some sleep, and we’ll talk about it when we get up.” He walked off toward the hallway his room was on. Kevin followed.

“No! I want an honest answer. You’re lying. You’re lying when you say you forgot.” Kevin could hear how crazy he sounded, but the words felt good as they spilled out of him, like a pressure valve releasing. “How fried does your brain have to be for you to forget a list that’s in your hand?”

Sam stopped in the doorway of his bedroom, finally showing a flash of anger. “I’m not lying. I forgot your goddamn peanut butter. I get you’re upset, but I’m in no mood to deal with this right now. Go to bed.”

Good. Anger was good. At least Sam was paying attention to him now. Kevin shoved past him into the room, taking pleasure in the jarring physical force when he elbowed Sam against the wall. “You are lying. You didn’t forget, at least not the first time.” Kevin grabbed a fistful of Sam’s ugly blue plaid shirt. Something to keep Sam from wandering off again, something to make him look down to Kevin’s level. “You had the list, and you ignored it on purpose. I want to know why.” Kevin’s fingers turned white with the strength of his grip. He wanted a straight answer, wanted to hear Sam tell him how little he mattered.

Sam gripped his wrist and broke his hold like it was nothing. “I saw three people die tonight. Now’s really not the time.”

“Tell me why, tell me why you forgot about me!” Sam’s hand tightened painfully on Kevin’s wrist. Kevin writhed, but he couldn’t get free. “Just fucking say it!” Kevin was shrieking now. His anger felt bigger than he was, like it was about to crack right through the shell of his skin. “I want to know why!” He screamed the question over and over until his throat ached.

Sam pushed him toward the door, wrist in hand, like he was going to throw him out of the room bodily. Kevin still had one arm free, though, and he wrapped it around the back of Sam’s neck at the same time he hooked his legs around Sam’s thighs. He wasn’t going anywhere until he was good and ready. Their bodies fell against the shut door with a heavy thunk. Sam was pressed up against him, broad chest heaving against Kevin’s, dark glossy hair falling across Kevin’s cheek, fierce eyes locked on Kevin’s face. Kevin’s wrist ached with the force of Sam’s grip. For one instant Kevin felt as terrifyingly important to Sam as Sam was to him. When he jerked forward and forced his tongue into Sam’s mouth it was less desire than the only violation he was strong enough to manage. He wanted to be under Sam’s skin.

When Sam didn’t immediately throw him off he pushed away from the door and crowded them toward the bed. What they were doing to each other couldn’t rightly be called kissing; Sam was crushing his mouth against Kevin’s. It had been weeks since Kevin remembered to cut his nails, and when he clawed across Sam’s arms and back he raised red welts. He dug in harder when he saw them, wanting blood and pain. Kevin’s thigh collided with a heavy metal lamp on the nightstand as they tumbled onto the mattress, and his urge to fuck Sam felt indistinguishable from his urge to use the lamp to bash in Sam’s skull. His heart rattled against his rib cage until his whole body shook, and his pulse surged white and gray behind his eyes. Sam’s shirt was gone, Kevin’s shirt was gone, and he pulled at Sam’s jeans so viciously that he snapped one of his nails against the zipper. His hand left a thin trail of blood across Sam’s stomach.

Sam pulled him away by the hair with stinging force, and Kevin snarled and bit at the straining sinews of his arm. Sam’s free hand pushed off his own jeans and threw them aside, and then tore at Kevin’s. Kevin still had his shoes on, and he kicked at them, awkward and desperate, for several seconds before he knocked them to the floor and tossed his jeans behind them.

Naked in Sam’s lap, he ground against Sam’s stomach and thighs. He shoved Sam’s back against the creaking headboard and nipped at his throat, teeth grazing against the flesh until he reached the juncture with his shoulder and bit down hard. Sam made a satisfyingly wounded sound in the grip of Kevin’s teeth, and Kevin hung on, his mouth coppery with Sam’s blood.

Kevin thrust frantically against Sam’s lap, feeling the slick slide of Sam’s hard cock under his balls and between his ass cheeks. He clutched at Sam’s hair, thick brown strands torn away between his fingers, until his rage peaked in a full body flush he didn’t expect to end in orgasm. Sam thrust up against the groove of his ass a half dozen times, panting with need, and came.

Kevin slumped against Sam’s chest, his face buried in the crook of Sam’s neck. He could feel Sam’s pulse race under his lips, and the rapid rise and fall of his chest against his own. Whatever force had possessed Kevin’s body with such terrifying fury had left him as suddenly as it had come on. All the places inside him that had been lit up by that dazzling flash of anger were once again securely dark.

Sam’s hand rested squarely on the small of Kevin’s back. It could almost have been affectionate. Kevin was seated in Sam’s lap, his legs around Sam’s waist. He could feel Sam’s softening dick under his ass. He’d never been naked with another person, and it was unsettlingly intimate. He wanted nothing except to stay where he was, with his face hidden and his mind blank.

When Sam shifted, slipping out from under him, Kevin snapped back to reality. Jesus fucking Christ. That had happened. Sam was here and Kevin was going to have to look at him, and talk to him, and put on a show of maturity, or toughness, or God only knew what. Kevin didn’t have a script for this situation. What the hell was standard operating procedure after you hate-fucked your roommate? They hadn’t covered these kind of essential etiquette questions in sex ed, and porn never showed you the awkward conversations that had to happen once the orgasms were over.

Would Sam want to keep arguing? Kevin felt too raw to fight. He could picture himself bursting into tears at the first hard word, and if that happened he’d have no choice but to go bury himself alive in the bunker’s sub-basement, because he’d never be able to look anyone in the eye ever again.

Should Kevin make a joke to break the tension? That was a thing guys did, right? But even back in the days when he’d talked to people regularly Kevin had never managed to sound convincingly cool. He wasn’t going to pull it off now.

Getting the hell out of the room before he was forced to talk to Sam felt like the most Kevin could accomplish without making a fool of himself. He slid off the bed and kicked aside the blanket that had fallen to the floor, searching for his clothes. He spotted his jeans almost immediately, but his underwear and t-shirt had vanished. He knelt down to look under the bed.

“Really? You’re still pissed?” Sam sounded exhausted, long miles of late-night highway in his voice. Kevin shook his head because he didn’t trust himself to speak. He kept feeling around, looking for his underwear. Sam’s come trickled slowly down his leg. He wanted to find his fucking clothes already so he could clean up in privacy. He was breathing harder now than he had when he was riding Sam’s lap, his heart beating in his throat with a palpable thump. He kept flipping up the same edge of the blanket on the floor, looking for his clothes underneath it like they might magically appear the fifth time he checked.

Sam’s face appeared over the edge of the bed, looming above Kevin. “Are you okay?” His tone was softer than before. Kevin nodded and checked again under the same corner of blanket. No such luck. It felt like one of those nightmares where he’d look down in the middle of his high school hallway to discover he was naked. His lungs burned, and he felt the weight of all the earth above him pressing down on his back.

Sam’s hand was suddenly an inch away from his eyes, and it was a long moment before Kevin understood Sam was holding it out to him. “Hey, why don’t you come sit down here for a minute?” Sam used his other hand to pat the bed. When Kevin couldn’t muster a response immediately Sam added, “Please?”

Kevin wanted to sprint naked to his nearest panic room and hide until the world made sense again, and he wanted to curl up in Sam’s arms. He split the difference. He ignored Sam’s extended hand, but he crawled back onto the bed, dragging the blanket off the floor behind him. He huddled under it, covered to the neck, and tossed the rest over Sam’s lap, hiding his crotch. He didn’t need to look at Sam’s limp dick right now.

Sam laid a hand on his shoulder, and Kevin flinched. “Don’t touch me.” It came out of his mouth as the kind of clipped command he could never otherwise pull off, and Sam’s hand instantly fell away. Kevin shut his eyes and focused on his breathing, trying to follow the lessons his therapist had taught him in another lifetime. He counted to five before every breath, tapping the seconds out against his wrist. Blessedly, it worked, and Kevin was spared the humiliation of throwing up or passing out, or of sending Sam off to find him a paper bag.

When he opened his eyes Sam was staring at him, because of course he was. “Are you okay?” Sam asked in the fixedly calm, reasonable tone people used when Kevin’s behavior had just scared the hell out of them. Kevin was familiar with it from the times he’d had a meltdown at school. “Do you need . . . ?” Sam trailed off when Kevin didn’t immediately fill in the blank. “I care about you, you know? I want to help.” His hand hovered in the air a few inches above Kevin’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I know,” Kevin said, as he watched a tiny bead of blood well up out of his broken fingernail. “I’m all right now. That just happens sometimes. Ever since I was a kid. It’s not your fault. Sorry if I freaked you out.” The panic had quieted down until all that was left of it was the jangly, uneven beating of his heart and the adrenaline tremor in his fingers. He felt nervous and sad and exhausted. He felt like himself.

Kevin risked a glance at Sam. There was a harsh red bite where Sam’s neck met his shoulder, and jagged scratches on his skin. Kevin remembered the sex vividly, remembered giving Sam that bite, but he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that he’d done the things his memory showed him doing. He couldn’t reconcile that person, sick with uncontainable rage, with Kevin Tran, and the graphic images his brain insisted on replaying for him were entirely unlike any sexual fantasy he’d ever had. It felt like someone else had seized control of his body, and he was stuck with the consequences. His thighs were sticky, and he smelled like Sam’s sweat and come. His mouth tasted like Sam’s saliva, and maybe a bit of his blood. Kevin had never done more than kiss.

“Are you sure . . .?” Sam started.

Kevin noticed a line of stitches down Sam’s side that he’d somehow missed in his frenzy. A trickle of blood had oozed out of them and run down Sam’s ribs. “You’re bleeding,” Kevin said. Anything that allowed him to turn the topic of conversation away from himself was a blessing. He was nowhere near okay enough to keep reassuring Sam about how okay he was.

“Oh! Oh, yeah.” Sam looked down at the wound casually, and Kevin thought that maybe it was an act of kindness, that somehow Sam had understood how desperately Kevin needed to change the subject. Then again, maybe he just didn’t want to talk about Kevin’s breakdown either.

“Nothing serious,” Sam said. He pulled a couple of tissues out of the box by the bed and dabbed primly at the blood.

“Sorry about that,” Kevin said after a moment of awkward silence. “And uh, you know, the biting and scratching and all.”

Sam’s smile was more sincere than Kevin had any right to expect. “These things happen.” Kevin was pretty sure they didn’t, at least not to people who lived outside this particular underground hellscape, but he wasn’t inclined to argue. Sam shrugged. “Anyway, I kind of enjoyed the biting and scratching. And all.”

Kevin was caught off-guard. He smiled back, flushed and awkward. “Perv.”

“I like what I like,” Sam said, with note of amused self-assurance. Then he sobered, and Kevin could see him winding up for a Very Important Talk. “Listen, Kevin, what happened . . . I know it wasn’t really about peanut butter.”

Kevin was prepared to admit, in the safety of his own mind, the possibility that not all his anger toward Sam was strictly peanut butter related. But it was condescending of Sam to assume the reason Kevin said he was angry wasn’t really the reason Kevin was angry. He wasn’t even entirely right.

“No, it was about peanut butter.” Kevin sighed. He’d told the Winchesters this a million times already, and nothing ever changed. “The only reason you think I can’t be mad about peanut butter is that you can buy it whenever you want. I can’t. Grocery day is Sunday. If I run out of peanut butter on Thursday, I don’t get to swing by the supermarket early. I spend the next three days thinking about it, craving it, making plans for it. I have a reason to get up in the morning because I know that come Sunday I’m going to eat the fuck out of some peanut butter. When I open those grocery bags at the end of the week, and I find my peanut butter, or my apples, or my whatever, that’s as close as I get to happy, and when you take that away from me . . .”

Sam was studying Kevin’s face with a look that might have been pity, and Kevin was suddenly aware of how pathetically intense his emotional investment in Grocery Day was. It was too intimate to hand Sam right now; it was power on top of power, and he didn’t trust Sam enough to make his relation to him even weaker than it already was. He changed tacks to an undeniably righteous position: “I’m just saying, I work 80 hours a week for you, and you pay me in room and board. You could at least get the board right.”

Sam touched his arm in a reassuring, brotherly way that struck Kevin as hilariously out of keeping with the brutality of what they’d just done, but Sam seemed so serious about it that Kevin bit his tongue. “You know you don’t work _for_ us, right?” Sam said. “You work with us. We want you to live here. It’s not conditional on anything.”

That was a lovely sentiment that had no relationship to reality. The Winchesters gave Kevin his marching orders. When Kevin rebelled against their pressure, Dean tried to inspire him with the sort of tough love speeches that the coach made to the team in the third act of a sports movie, and Sam tried to inspire him with the sort of up-with-people speeches Robin Williams made to his worshipful students in _Dead Poets Society_. Kevin wasn’t sure whose lectures he found less helpful, but he wished they’d both can it.

And yet he was a little charmed by Sam’s earnestness, even if he didn’t buy it. He smiled in spite of himself. “Sam, for real? You just touched my dick. That means you never get to pull your Obi Wan Kenobi crap on me again.”

Sam settled against the headboard, looking tragically wronged by Kevin’s misjudgment of his character. “I mean it, you’re one of us. And what ‘Obi Wan Kenobi crap’ have I ever pulled on you?”

Kevin resisted the urge to imitate Sam’s inspirational puppy look. It felt mean-spirited under the circumstances. “’It gets better? It’s a marathon, not a sprint—here, take these pills?’ Anyway,” he plowed on, because he was afraid if he made Sam feel too guilty about Kevin’s complicated relationship with pain killers and speed, Sam would take them away, “I totally work for you. You guys tell me what to do, and you yell at me when I don’t do it fast enough. That’s what a boss is. Face it, you fucked the intern.”

Sam looked entertainingly distressed by that suggestion, and it dawned on Kevin that there was a certain power in pointing out how powerless he was. It didn’t make him Sam’s equal but it made him . . . something. Something with a smattering of control. It made him feel fonder of Sam. “It’s okay,” he said, and he felt comfortable enough in his own skin to give a teasing smile. “I’m 18 and the HR at this place is terrible. You won’t get in trouble.”

Sam still seemed uneasy, but he returned Kevin’s smile even as he looked away. “I never thought about it like that.”

Kevin’s smile broadened. “Me either, until just now. If I’d been smarter I’d have negotiated before I put out. My performance was worth a letter of recommendation, at least.”

“That’s not funny.” Sam sounded genuinely offended.

Kevin knocked his shoulder lightly against Sam’s. “It’s a little funny,” he murmured, as much to himself as to Sam. He tucked a loose bit of hair behind the delicate curve of Sam’s ear, and Sam didn’t pull away. How often Kevin had imagined touching that ear when it was revealed by the loose ponytail Sam used while researching in the library, or when it peeked out between the sweaty strands of his hair after a run.

Kevin had been joking about the letter of recommendation, but once the words were out of his mouth they had the ring of truth. He had so little to offer that Sam might want--only the tablet and this. If he’d played his cards right, if he’d had the presence of mind to play his cards at all, he could have driven a harder bargain. Not for a plum internship or an A on his final, maybe, but for something: attention, affection, lichen-adjacent hand-holding. If nothing else, he might have gotten himself some sex he actually enjoyed. He felt a stone of regret in his stomach.

“I should probably go try to sleep for a couple of hours,” Kevin said, sitting up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to bed, but he felt raw-eyed and light-headed.

“You can sleep here if you want.” It was a sweet offer, but Kevin wasn’t interested. The thought of lying naked next to a naked Sam was half thrilling and half creepy, and neither would help him rest. Besides, Kevin still smelled like Sam’s sweat, come, and saliva, and he wanted to shower and put on clean clothes. He wanted to be safely back in his own bedroom, his body entirely his own again, and think about what had happened away from Sam’s distracting presence.

He knew voicing any of those thoughts would be rude, though, so instead he said, “Nah, I don’t have my headphones. I can’t sleep without them.” Which was also true. There was no telling when the people in the walls might start whispering to each other about cupolas, and he preferred not to hear them.

“Oh. Okay.” Sam’s voice was barely audible. Kevin stood and picked his jeans up off the floor. This time it was easy to figure out that his shirt and boxers were on the other side of the bed, and he pulled them on quickly. He turned to face Sam at the door, and caught a glimpse of Sam’s expression that he was pretty sure he hadn’t been meant to see. Sam didn’t look disappointed, like a mother with a lazy son, or guilty, like a boss who’d fucked his intern, or maturely concerned, like a teacher with a difficult but talented student. He looked hurt, like a guy who’d had violent, miserable sex with someone he liked, and then watched that person get dressed and walk out on him. It had never occurred to Kevin that he could hurt Sam. He’d always assumed the Winchesters forgot he existed as soon as he left the room.

Kevin hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. He didn’t want to be cruel, but he still didn’t want to stay. He considered the possibility of kissing Sam goodbye, but that felt like a feat beyond any courage he could summon. He saw Sam’s hand resting on top of the sheets and doubled back to take it in his own. He stood there, clutching it until his fingers hurt, and he couldn’t think of a goddamned thing to say.

Sam looked down at where their hands were touching, brow furrowed. “Are you okay?” he asked, and now he did look concerned.

“Yeah.” Kevin couldn’t remember the last time he’d been okay, but he figured Sam was asking specifically in relation to the sex. He made himself smile. “Just embarrassed, mostly.” ‘Ashamed’ was more accurate, but it would’ve sounded too judgmental. “I’m fine. It’s all fine.”

Kevin knew he needed to let go of Sam’s hand and walk out, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He just stood there, holding on. “I’m sorry,” he went on finally. “I don’t know what got into me. Who that guy was, where he came from. I wish it hadn’t happened like that. Just, I’m sorry.” Sorry he sucked at sorting out the chunks of his ruined existence that were Sam’s fault from the ones that weren’t, sorry he’d done something so ugly to one of the few bright spots in his life, sorry they’d both gotten so abruptly, intimately acquainted with the fucking terrifying person who apparently lived under Kevin’s skin.

“Please stop apologizing.” Sam cupped Kevin’s face in his hand. “If anyone should feel bad, it’s me. I shouldn’t have let this happen, and I’m sure as hell not proud of how I acted. But what we did . . . I know you didn’t believe me when I said these things happen, but I swear to God, these things happen. It was stupid, but stupid is all it was. You don’t need to beat yourself up. It wasn’t a disaster, it wasn’t unforgivable, it wasn’t something we can’t put behind us. Unless that’s how it was for you.”

“No,” Kevin said, “it’s not like that.” He hadn’t actually considered whether this was something he could put behind him, or weighed the possibility that what they’d done was anything less than catastrophic. But it was a nice idea, and he could almost believe it. Even in the few minutes that had passed his memories had become less crushingly vivid, and he could already feel himself shunting them away to the unvisited corner of his brain where he kept things he didn’t like to look at.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” Sam asked.

Kevin wished he could say yes, would’ve killed to say yes on a different day. But he needed to be alone, and he couldn’t imagine any scenario where he hung around in Sam’s bed this morning, feeling as shaky and confused as he did, that didn’t end with at least one of them in tears. “Not right now. I need time. Rain check, maybe?”

Sam squeezed his hand before he let it go. “Yeah, maybe. We’ll see how we feel.”

Kevin nodded and turned to leave. He stopped at the door and gave Sam a small smile. “You still have to go the store when you wake up, you know. You’re not off the hook.”

Sam gave a surprised huff. He looked genuinely amused, which was something. “Kevin, I don’t think I’ll ever forget anything on your grocery list again as long as I live.”

“Good,” Kevin said, although he’d believe it when he saw it, and shut the door behind him.

The hallway outside Sam’s room was shadowy and still, tense with the threat of the hallucinatory demons and impossible voices Kevin had briefly forgotten. He froze in the doorway a minute, unable to go forward, before he finally rallied the courage to walk to his room. He pretended he could still feel the weight of Sam’s hand in his own as he stepped forward into the dark.


End file.
